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ACI 318-14: International Cooperation is the Goal—Guest Author Johan L. Silfwerbrand

11/4/2015

My first experience with ACI was at the Spring Convention in 1989 in Atlanta, GA. I was in the United States as a post-doc and had the pleasure of spending 6 months in Austin, TX, and Urbana-Champaign, IL. My supervisor Sven Sahlin introduced me to his friends Jim Jirsa and Mete Sozen and they introduced me to ACI. Since then I have tried to attend every second convention and I think the reception you experience when you arrive as a European to ACI is very positive and rather different from the conditions at various conferences elsewhere.

I am thinking not only of the official recognition given to international attendees at the Opening Session and the invitation to the President's Reception but also the welcome from kind individuals. ACI is almost like a very big family. During my first conventions, everyone seemed to be astonished that I had made the long trip from Sweden to North America for such a short visit, but more recently, the astonishment has vanished concurrently with the decreasing air ticket prices. However, the journey is still very long; you just pay less for every hour you spend in the air.

Another difference between ACI conventions and most international conferences is ACI's focus on committee meetings. Having fixed dates for committee meetings at least twice a year facilitates ongoing activities within each committee, and the travel throughout the United States and Canada required of members does not seem to impair the efficiency. In many other volunteer organizations, the process of finding meeting days is very time-consuming and often slows a committee's progress. Compared to European concrete organizations, I also think that ACI is much better at attracting students and young professionals. Young professionals play important roles as Committee Secretaries or even Chairs, Speakers, and Session Moderators.

Personally, I am engaged in the work of both ACI and fib (the International Federation of Structural Concrete). I know that efforts are being made to improve the cooperation between these two important international concrete organizations but wish that the progress could be faster. During my time as the President of the Swedish Concrete Association, I was very happy to sign an International Partner Agreement with ACI. We could develop the cooperation further, and any apprehension that the larger society would overshadow the smaller one has been shown to be completely groundless.

In Europe, fib paved the way for the current Eurocode 2 that successfully has replaced the national concrete codes in the member states to facilitate trade between the countries. Being a faculty member at a university with international ambitions and many incoming students, I am pleased that today we can illustrate the hour-long lectures with examples from Eurocode 2 and not just the old Swedish code.

Recently, fib released MC 2010, which will form the basis for the next version of Eurocode 2 that may be launched in 2020 or 2025. Simultaneously, ACI has released a new version of ACI 318. When are we going to make one document that could be used across the entire globe? A concrete structure should not be designed differently due only to the fact that Europe is using French units and the United States is using British units.

You may argue that it is beneficial to have two competitive codes because the competition may lead to improvements of both. However, I think that in the long run we can neither handle the challenges from global warming, sustainable energy production, clean water, urbanization, and an aging population, nor the competition from other construction materials without a common strategy where the work on a common concrete code would be one of the most important parts.

Johan L. Silfwerbrand, is a Professor with the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden